Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Classification Levels

Most people are aware of the US levels of classified information: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. An odd bit of trivial I discovered over lunch today is that the NATO levels are slightly different. NATO levels are generally marked the same as the US levels, but with "NATO" stuck in front of them. There is NATO Restricted, NATO Secret, etc. The only difference is that Top Secret becomes "Cosmic" Top Secret. Cosmic. That got some giggles around the lunch table.

Why Cosmic? What exactly does NATO have in those files? The current location of Galactus? Correspondence from the Vulcans or the Greys? Perhaps some NATO functionary just thought the name sounded cool after doing too much LDS in the sixties.